(Brasilia) Brazilian firefighters try Sunday to put out a fire in the national park of Brasilia, the new focus of the wave of fires raging in Brazil due to the worst drought ever recorded in the country.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and First Lady Rosângela da Silva flew over the devastated area of this nature reserve in the Brazilian capital, according to images published on their social networks.
“The federal government is working with firefighters to fight the flames,” the president wrote.
It is the largest fire of the year in the city, which has accumulated 145 days without rain and minimal humidity levels.
The flames have so far devastated 1,200 hectares, according to the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), responsible for administering Brazil’s national parks.
He said the fire response is expected to continue throughout the night in the 30,000-hectare park.
The fire broke out on the same day that Supreme Court Justice Flavio Dino authorized the government to exceed the spending ceiling to finance the fight against what he considers a “fire pandemic.”
“We cannot refuse maximum and effective aid to more than half of our territory […] “under the pretext of respecting an accounting rule that is not in the Constitution,” said Mr. Dino, who was Lula’s justice minister until January.
“The objective is to completely free the hands of the Brazilian state” to protect the populations affected by the flames, particularly in the Amazon (North), he added.
The number of fires in September (55,517) has already exceeded that recorded during the entire month of September 2023 (46,498), according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
Fires in Brazil are spreading more easily because of a historic drought that experts link to climate change, and low humidity.
Smoke from the fires is affecting some of Brazil’s major cities, such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, as well as neighboring countries.